Youth Baseball Gone Wild

[Hegemon]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/b ... ml?cnn=yes

A few weeks ago I read a story about this guy who was coaching a youth baseball team. Most of the story is in the above article , but some of the details are from memory of the original article. Anyways, he had this one mildly autistic kid who wasn't as good as the other kids, and it was a playoff game, so he offered one of the other kids 25 dollars to throw a ball at the autistic kid to get him out of the game. The first ball hit the kid and made him start crying, but i think the kid's mother told him to continue playing (I think she was unaware of what had happened). So the coach told the kid to throw another ball at the autistic kid, but harder this time. At this point people found out what is going on and the coach got in trouble. He has since been sentenced to between 1 and 6 years in prison for "corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault".

What do you guys think of the sentence? Is it too harsh, too lenient or just right? What do you think of the situation itself?

[daPyr0x]

To hell with 1-6 years
Public flogging ftw!

[Dr. Mobius]

Cut and edited from an IM conversation with John:

I'm assuming this was one of those for fun youth leagues where everyone's supposed to be able to participate and not a competitive league which would allow the coach to pick and choose who he wants to play. In the first case he should be stripped of his coaching duties, but in the latter he shouldn't have let the autistic kid on the team in the first place. Either way, the sentence is a bit harsh in my opinion. Unless the kid was severely injured, community service and/or a fine would've beem more than enough to get the point across.

The deciding point, I think, is whether he hit him because he was autistic or simply because he sucked. If the decision was based solely on the kid's mental issues, then it's discrimination and the ruling is fair or maybe even a little lenient. However if autism had nothing to do with it and he would've hit the kid anyways if he was normal, then the ruling is too harsh.

[anonshadow]

I don't think that the sentence is too harsh, but I also don't think it's too lenient. If this was a competetive sports team, then he shouldn't have let the kid on in the first place, and it's his problem. The solution isn't to smack the kid around for something that was completely out of the kid's hands. If it's a team you play on for fun, then it's really stupid, and he shouldn't have been coaching.

Either way, it's his problem, not the kid's, and his actions really could damage the kid's psyche. He took actions against an innocent little kid who was doing the best he could, and he deserves to pay for it.